from Caledonian Mercury, 18 May 2010
Scottish ministers may be forced to up their targets for cutting climate pollution over the next two years after their plans were roundly rejected as “seriously inadequate” by MSPs.
Labour, LibDem and Green MSPs on the Scottish Parliament’s climate change committee today combined to vote down the SNP government’s aim of cutting carbon emissions by just half a percent in 2011 and in 2012.
Ministers now have to decide whether to risk another rejection by putting their proposals before the full parliament, or to come up with improved targets. They only have two weeks to act because climate change law says that annual targets have to be in place by 1 June.
The SNP manifesto for the 2007 Holyrood election promised “mandatory carbon reduction targets of 3% per annum“ in order to reach a 42% cut by 2020. But that aim was watered down to 0.5% for the next couple of years on the grounds that it would be too hard to meet.
The statutory instrument that would have brought in the annual targets was thrown out by five votes to three at a meeting of the Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change Committee. “These proposals from SNP ministers were seriously inadequate,” said the committee’s convenor, Green MSP Patrick Harvie.
“The SNP have failed the climate test, but parliament has now risen to the occasion. We need early action on climate change to cut household bills, to improve people’s journeys to work and make green jobs more than just talk.”
Harvie accused the SNP of being “completely unwilling” to change its polluting policies. “They're wedded to coal and motorways, with an agenda straight from the last century,” he argued. “They must now think again.”
Jim Tolson MSP, the LibDem deputy spokesman on climate change, dismissed the SNP’s annual targets as “deeply unambitious”. He said: “The SNP manifesto promised an annual emissions reduction target of 3% as year from day one. The SNP should honour this promise.”
Labour’s Cathy Peattie MSP, the committee’s deputy convenor, also criticised the targets. “We want to see a much more ambitious target to cut carbon emissions, backed up with credible policies to make it happen,” she said.
The Scottish government pointed out that it had been going further than it had been advised to go by experts on the UK Committee on Climate Change. That committee had suggested no reductions at all in climate pollution for 2011 and 2012.
Last night, ministers had not decided how to react to the rejection of their targets. “We note the outcome of today’s vote in committee,” a government spokeswoman told The Caledonian Mercury. “We are now considering our next steps.”
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